Herbert Von Karajan: A Life in Music

Description

Herbert von Karajan was one of the twentieth century's most prodigiously gifted performing artists. Richard Osborne knew him and had many conversations with him. These, however, were only the starting point for a biography which draws on interviews with those who worked with Karajan during his sixty year career, and on a vast array of primary archive material which has never been previously examined.This biography explores Karajan's life and music-making against the background of European music and politics in the years 1908 - 1989. The Austrian theatre producer Otto Schenk once said of Karajan- 'He is not only a musician. He is a whole period. When I was a boy he was already a period in our history'. This epic biography explores that period, and the enigma of the man who made it.

Richard Osborne is one of Britain's best known and most widely respected writers and broadcasters on classical music. Born in 1943 in the East Riding of Yorkshire, he read English at Bristol University. He taught for a number of years, began broadcasting for BBC Radio 3 in 1969, and joined the review panel of Gramophone in 1974. His Rossini (1985) was widely acclaimed for its readability and scholarship and is now regarded as the standard work on the subject. In 1989, he published Conversations with Karajan. He is married, with one son, and lives in Berkshire.